1726 in literature

• February – Lavinia Fenton makes her stage debut as Monimia in Thomas Otway's The Orphan at the Haymarket Theatre in London.
• April 5 – Publication takes place in London of Lewis Theobald's Shakespeare Restored, or A Specimen of the Many Errors As Well Committed as Unamended by Mr Pope in his Late Edition of this Poet; Designed Not only to correct the said Edition, but to restore the True Reading of Shakespeare in all the Editions ever yet published.
• May 1 – Voltaire arrives for a three-year stay in England.
• May 25 – Britain's first circulating library is opened in Edinburgh by the poet and bookseller Allan Ramsay.[1][2]
• October 26 – Jonathan Swift's satirical novel Gulliver's Travels is published in London, anonymously in two volumes, as Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. In Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and then a Captain of Several Ships. It sells out in a week.

Uncertain dates

• Teatro Valle opens in Rome.
• Françoise-Louise de Warens converts to Catholicism to receive a church pension, and annuls her marriage.
• The Gujin Tushu Jicheng (古今圖書集成), an immense Chinese encyclopedia, is printed using copper-based movable type printing.

• March 11 – Louise d'Épinay, French writer (died 1783)
• April 7 – Charles Burney, English historian of music and composer (died 1814)
• June 14 – Thomas Pennant, Welsh naturalist and writer (died 1798)
• September 2 – John Howard, English philanthropist and writer (died 1790)
• September 25 – Angelo Maria Bandini, Italian author and librarian (died 1800)
• September 26 – John H. D. Anderson, Scottish natural philosopher (died 1796)

• March 24 – Daniel Whitby, English theologian (born 1638)
• March 26 – Sir John Vanbrugh, English dramatist and architect (born 1664)
• April 5 – Ludwig Babenstuber, German theologian and philosopher (born 1660)
• April 26 – Jeremy Collier, English theologian and critic (born 1650)
• May 20 – Nicholas Brady, Irish poet (born 1659)
• July 5 – Domenico Viva, Italian theologian (born 1648)
• July 6 – Humfrey Wanley, English librarian and palaeographer (born 1672)
• December 2 – Samuel Penhallow, English historian (born 1665)
• December 11 – Jacques Bouillart, French Benedictine historian (born 1669)

Uncertain date

• Charles Shadwell, English dramatist (unknown year of birth)